Cranberry Jam

Cranberry sauce is fine as a side dish on Thanksgiving, but cranberry JAM is amazing on toast, English muffins, or stirred into yogurt.

Try it on that English muffin with a little smear of cream cheese. Spread it on the bread for a turkey sandwich.

Or how about on quesadilla? Yeah, that's good too! Or as a filling for jam thumbprint cookies.

Cranberry season is fleeting, but I'll bet you can find them on sale now, fresh, and maybe even a better deal frozen.

Speaking of frozen, you might want to toss some in the freezer so you can make this any time. It's so simple and soooo good. You don't even need pectin to make this!

I like mine more tart than sweet, but you can certainly add more sugar, if you like. And you can also experiment with flavors. Or add other fruits, like apples, pears, strawberries, blueberries, or raspberries. Have fun with it!

Cranberry Jam
Makes about 2  1/2 pints

Why yes, that IS a lot of cranberries!

3 pounds cranberries, fresh or frozen
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt.

Put everything in a saucepan. Heat, stirring as needed until the cranberries pop and the mixture boils and becomes thick. It doesn't take a long time, so don't wander away from it. Give it a taste and add more sugar if it's too tart for you. Stir to combine and taste again.

Use a stick blender to blend the mix smooth. Or, transfer to a blender.

Pass the mixture through a fine-mesh sieve to remove the seeds and any unblended skins.

Transfer the mixture to containers for storage, and refrigerate. Note that this is NOT a canning recipe - I have no idea if it would be safe. I'm also not sure how long it lasts, since I somehow manage to use it all before it goes bad.

Want more flavor? I like this as-is, but you can certainly add more flavor, like vanilla extract, almond extract, lemon, ginger, cinnamon, chipotle, basil, or pretty much any flavor you think will be compatible.

Cranapple Fizz Cocktail

It might be the season of the pumpkin spice latte, but I like cranberry flavors much better.

Cranberry might not be the best match for your coffee, but it makes a nice cocktail, and it can be used in pie, ice cream, jam, chutney ... so many things.

The perfect friend for cranberry is apple, and Smirnoff combined those two flavors in their new Smirnoff Sourced Cranberry Apple. It's pretty tasty stuff, so you don't need to do a lot with it to make a cocktail.

Which is great.

I like tasty cocktails, but I don't get excited about mixing a ton of different ingredients to make a single cocktail in the evening. Because that's what I usually have. Just one.

Life is just a bowl of ... frozen cranberries?

The clove in this cocktail adds that nice holiday flavor that is so familiar. If you're measuring out one or two cocktails the day before you'll be serving, it's simple enough to count the cloves.

On the other hand, if you're planning on flavoring a lot of cocktails or making drinks by the pitcher, you can just put 1/4 cup of whole cloves in the bottle and let it steep for a day or more. The flavor gets stronger the longer it sits, so it's a good idea to taste it occasionally and remove the cloves when you like the flavor.

I briefly considered using some whole cloves as part of a garnish - stuck into an apple slice, for example. But no one really wants to bite into a whole clove, so I nixed the idea. The cranberries on top are a pretty nice garnish, and they keep the cocktail cool.

If you like super-tart things, you can eat those fresh cranberries used for the garnish. But beware. They're crazy tart.

Cranapple Fizz Cocktail

1 ounce Smirnoff Sourced Cranberry Apple
2 whole cloves
Whole frozen cranberries
Sparking or plain lemonade, chilled, as needed

The night before (or at least a few hours before) you want to make your cocktail, measure out the amount of Smirnoff Sourced you will need and add 2 whole cloves per ounce of the Smirnoff.

You can also make this well in advance and just let it steep in a closed container. Strain the cloves out before using the Smirnoff Sourced.

Put a few frozen cranberries into a martini-sized glass or something similar. Or a few more cranberries. As many as you like. The cranberries make a nice garnish and also help keep the drink chilled.

Add the strained Smirnoff Sourced, then fill with the sparkling lemonade (or plain lemonade, if you prefer).

If you don't happen to have prepared lemonade, you can simply add lemon, to taste, along with plain or sparkling water.

Serve chilled.

This post was sponsored by Smirnoff.

Yogurt-Filled Crepes with Apple and Cranberry Compote and a #Giveaway

Crepes are so fun - thin little pancakes that you can do so much with. They can be sweet or they can be savory. They can be breakfast, brunch, lunch, dinner or dessert.

They can be whatever you want them to be.

I didn't grow up eating crepes, and the first time I had them, they were cheese blintzes. I thought they were magical. I had no idea how easy they were to make.

Of course, it helps if you have a decent recipe and a good pan to work with.

One of my lucky readers WILL have a pan to work with, because I'm giving one away, courtesy of Anolon. They asked me to create a recipe, so you have that, too. My recipe is a yogurt-filled crepe topped with a seasonal apple-cranberry compote. Follow the link to find it on the Anolon website.

You want this recipe, particularly at this time of year when cranberries are so plentiful.

The beauty of these crepes is that they're so versatile. With a plain yogurt, they're a lovely lunch crepe. But if you use a flavored or sweetened yogurt, the crepes transform into a perfect breakfast or brunch crepe. Add some whipped cream or a dollop of ice cream, and these crepes would make a lovely dessert.

You could, of course, switch things around and fill the crepes with the compote and top it with yogurt, whipped cream, or ice cream, but the compote is so pretty, I thought it was a shame to hide it inside the crepe. It really wanted to be shown off.

If you have extra compote, I'm sure you'll find a use for it. And then you might want to make more. Because it's really really good.

As far as the pan, it's an Anolon 9.5 inch Advanced Bronze pan. It's a pleasure to use - light enough to be able to easily swirl the batter over and over and over while you're making a lot of crepes. And it's very nonstick. The crepes slide right out of the pan when they're done.

And ... shhhh ... the pan is also very useful for heating or reheating tortillas. And for reheating your crepes, too. I think you'll get a lot of use out of it. If you're the lucky winner who gets one.

Thanks to Anolon for sponsoring this post and for supplying the pan to the winner! The giveaway is now over.